28 March 2012
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Spain/Euskadi
Iñaki de Juana Chaos hunger strike raises the political
temperature
On the margins
of the Basque peace process, with the government engaged in a
difficult balancing act to keep negotiations alive without being
perceived to be making political concessions to ETA, the case
of hunger striker Iñaki de Juana Chaos became the focus
of heated controversy.
De Juana had been in prison since 1987 serving prison sentences amounting cumulatively to over 2,500 years for the murders of 25 members of the army and Guardia Civil by the comando Madrid which he headed with car bombs, assassinations and machine-gun attacks. In accordance with sentencing guidelines, he became eligible for release after 18 years, on 25 October 2004, due to the application of "redemptions" (tariff reductions for activities carried out in prison) to the 30-year maximum that could be served (raised to 40 years for specified terrorist convictions by Organic Law 7/2003). On 22 October 2004, a magistrate from the Audiencia Nacional, the Madrid-based court that has exclusive competence for terrorist cases, filed an appeal against some of the redemptions applied to De Juana Chaos, postponing his release. In an effort to prevent the outcry that the release was set to cause, two defiant opinion articles that he wrote shortly afterwards for the Basque newspaper Gara in December 2004 were deemed to contain threats against a number of named prison officials who he criticised for corruption and ill-treatment of prisoners. On 11 January 2005 he was charged on two new counts, of ETA membership and of issuing terrorist threats, on the basis of the articles, by judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska, thus preventing De Juana's release by decreeing pre-emptive custody in relation to the new charges.
The articles
The first article was critical of the onslaught against the
Movimiento Vasco de Liberación Nacional (MVLN, Basque
National Liberation Movement) by the media, judicial authorities,
police, prison officers and government. He listed a series of
practices to demoralise the movement, such as selective leaks
of internal discussions, prisoner dispersal and ill-treatment,
arrests and raids, before stating "Go to hell with all of
the above because you won't win", and describes the failure
to release him as an expression of "its servants' contempt
for their own laws", addressing some of the arguments used
to justify it.
The second article accused politicians of failing to address
of ill-treatment in prisons and criticised the substance of the
shake-up of directors of prisons by the Zapatero government (variously
described as "fascist" and "totalitarian")
ordered by the head of the prison service, Mercedes Gallizo,
claiming that officials notorious among prisoners for abuses
were promoted. He said that any hopes of it being a prelude for
more significant changes ended when the names of the new directors
were made public, singling out four of them for incidents including
violence against prisoners, provoking disturbances, sessions
of torture, noting that someone who could have been replaced
for the complaints and irregularities he amassed, or for stealing,
was replaced for his party membership with the change of government.
Judicial developments
In June, judge Santiago Pedraz shelved the case, arguing that the prisoner had expressed support for the MVLN rather than ETA, and that the wider movement is not considered a terrorist organisation, deeming that the issuing of threats had not been proven. Justice minister Juan Fernando López Aguilar responded by stating, in reference to De Juana Chaos and other prisoners in similar situations, that "they must not be released prematurely under any concept" and an appeal, in the midst of a media campaign against the decision, saw the third section of the penal branch of the Audiencia Nacional correcting the ruling by decreeing that De Juana Chaos be tried, as he had "boasted about and exalted" his membership of ETA in the articles which could thus be construed as "clearly revealing a terrorist threat".
On 6 November 2006, the Audiencia Nacional sentenced him to 12 years and 6 months in prison for terrorist threats. Commenting the sentence in El País newspaper, criminal law professor Nicolás García Rivas noted that the case against De Juana was "circumstantial", and described the sentence as "unacceptable", because the basis for the establishment of the threat was the nature of the person (an ETA member convicted for dozens of murders) rather than his actions, in the absence of direct threats other than a generic call for the Spanish establishment to take their "dirty hands out of Euskal Herria" or find out that they may lose them. He claims that the prisoners' allegations could have been construed as slander if any of the cited parties had chosen to file a lawsuit, and that his rhetoric, at most, could have been interpreted as an "exaltation or justification of terrorism", but not as threats. The sentence was lowered to three years by the Tribunal Supremo on 12 February 2007, sparking protests by the PP and the Asociación de Victimas del Terrorismo (AVT, association of victims of terrorism), which has been its most prominent ally in opposing the peace process. In fact, the new sentence meant that De Juana could serve his sentence under a relaxed prison regime, as over half the sentence had already been served in pre-emptive custody. On 28 February the prison service applied a regime of house arrest under police surveillance to De Juana, leading him to abandon the protest on 1 March after his transfer to San Sebastián.
The hunger strike
De Juana Chaos began an indefinite hunger strike in Algeciras
prison on 8 August 2006, demanding his unconditional release.
He was hospitalised on 19 September and was force-fed with a
drip by hospital staff, as well as having his arms and legs tied
to the bed for 24 hours, until he accepted not to obstruct doctors'
work. De Juana Chaos suspended the hunger strike on 8 October,
resuming it the day after he was sentenced in Madrid a month
later, and was hospitalised on 25 November and started being
force-fed again on 12 December. On 5 February 2006, as he approached
100 days on hunger strike, an interview with the prisoner that
was smuggled out of the hospital was published in the Times,
alongside a photograph of his emaciated body strapped to a hospital
bed, in which the prisoner was unrepentant in relation to his
crimes, criticised his treatment, demanded unconditional freedom
and expressed his support for the "process of dialogue and
negotiation". The interview drew an angry response from
Spanish politicians and media, which accused the British newspaper
of giving publicity to a terrorist.
Politics
The reactions that accompanied the course of the case have been
heated, in keeping with the general tone of Spanish politics
since the Zapatero government came to power. The PP has been
involved in months of constant mobilisation including large demonstrations
against the peace process by the right, levelling accusations
at the government that included "treason" and describing
the peace process itself as a "surrender" to the terrorists.
The De Juana case was presented as the government giving in to
blackmail by illegally decreeing the early release of an unrepentant
mass murderer to keep its partners happy, an allegation that
is set to be raised repeatedly in the coming campaign for the
regional elections as an example of the government yielding to
ETA. Demonstrations were held on 24 February and 10 March, the
first one called by the AVT to demand that De Juana serve his
entire sentence in prison and the second one called by the PP
to protest against the application of a relaxed prison regime.
The view from the abertzale scene could not have been more different:
De Juana was a prisoner unlawfully kept in prison after having
served his sentence as a result of political interference in
judicial process aimed at preventing a release that would have
embarrassed the government.
Moreover, it is not an isolated case, as former justice minister
López Aguilar announced that attempts would be made to
bring new charges against other unrepentant ETA members sentenced
for "blood crimes" whose release was imminent, and
the so-called "Parot doctrine" was established by the
Tribunal Supremo in the case involving ETA member Henri
Parot on 28 February 2006. It decreed that sentence redemptions
would be applied successively to the sentences detainees are
serving, rather than directly to the maximum allowed, which would
often render them ineffective, ensuring that repeat offenders
serve the 30-year maximum. The government stressed that the house
arrest measure was lawful as De Juana's case fulfilled the conditions
required for it to be applied, that the prisoner was still serving
his sentence and had not thus been "released", that
his sentences for murders had already been served and he was
now under arrest for the articles, and that the measure was adopted
to stop him from dying, with the State showing a mercy of which
terrorists were incapable, stopping De Juana Chaos from becoming
a martyr. The message was that De Juana did not win, as he is
still under arrest, and the government, police forces and courts
will continue to fight terrorism and to implement the law with
all its rigour.
Source
Times, 5-6,13.2.07; Behatokia (Basque
Human Rights Observatory) dossier on the De Juana Chaos case
(includes the two articles by the prisoner), http://behatokia.info;
El País 24.11.06, 1,11.3.07.
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